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Nine Train To Join Fort Smith Fire Department

The Fort Smith Fire Department is leading nine new hires through two weeks of aggressive simulations and training exercises to prepare them for their future with the department.

Capt. Phil Christensen expressed pride in the newest batch of probational firefighters. “Every one of them is very strong, very professional, very well organized. They listen well, they learn even better.”

Thursday afternoon in front of Fire Station No. 1, new hires rappelled from the peak of a fire truck’s ladder as part of their ropes training day.

Fort Smith Fire Department driver Ryan Rains encouraged and coaxed the group from the ground, while driver Chris Taylor helped from the summit, rappelling down alongside each new hire.

Ryan Higdon was among the first to rappel from the ladder, his first time rappelling from such height. “I was confident,” he said after a flawless descent. “The training they give us here — they walk us through everything. You know what to expect before you even get up there.”

Higdon was a volunteer in Talihina for three years before joining the Fort Smith force, and said he was excited to attend the academy and start his professional firefighting career. “I’ve worked real hard to get to this point; it’s hard work just getting hired on.”

Six of the new hires will head to a 10-week training and certification camp at the Arkansas Fire Training Academy in Camden, while the other three will go straight into working shifts.

“I think they’re going to finish with six of them tied for first,” Rains said of the firefighters who will be attending the academy.

Raphael Zamudio, who served as a firefighter in Mexico for 12 years and received his U.S. training at the San Diego Fire Academy; Michael Rutherford, an active member of the 188th Fire Department; and Dustin Moeser, a former Tonitown volunteer firefighter, are certified in all necessary courses to be a FSFD firefighter.

For them, the course is a refresher, said Christensen. “It instills the traditions of the Fort Smith Fire Department. … We work on their weaknesses, build them back up, build their strength up and their knowledge up and then put them to work,” he said,